The Patina Collective Is a Modified Mercedes Mecca

South Florida’s Patina Collective is an automotive assault on the senses in the same way a mega-event like Pebble Beach or Goodwood is, where you’re surrounded by rich history plus a bunch of amazing cars you never knew existed. The big difference here is that all these cars are Mercedes-Benzes, and they’re all under one roof (well, a couple of roofs). Billed as the “world’s largest Mercedes collection,” it consists of about 300 rare Benzes. Most of them are from the golden age of tuned, modified, and coachbuilt Mercedes from the 1980s to the early 2000s. All of them are either very special or totally unique—each car could legitimately warrant an attention-grabbing article on its own. Together, they could fill a gigantic book. Better yet, the guys behind the Patina Collective opened a museum, which we were lucky enough to visit back in 2024.

Probably the most important thing about this group of automobiles is that there isn’t a standard, stock Mercedes-Benz product in here. All were touched by famous tuners and/or coachbuilders like AMG, Koenig, Renntech, and Brabus, as well as lesser-known ones like ABC, SGS, Lorinser, and Carlsson. Their original owners weren’t your standard pencil pushers, either. They ranged from London stockbrokers to German industrialists, Yakuza bosses, sheikhs, pro athletes, African strongmen, and the Sultan of Brunei. Whether it’s the engine, the paint, the interior, the bodywork, or some combination of everything (a few are even bullet- and bomb-proof), each vehicle here is drastically different from the regular Benz model on which it’s based.

Many were planned and built on an individual basis for VIP clients, and the parallels to prewar coachbuilding are clear: “For the 1920s and 1930s, there were so many coachbuilding companies doing amazing things, later on there were spectacular hot rods in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Those have become huge collectible classes, but we felt that this ‘80s and ‘90s history of coachbuilding was kind of lost, and nobody else was really shining a light on it,” says Daniel Hassan, who co-founded the Patina Collective with partner Victor Ibrahim in 2021, joining forces in their passion for pre-Merger AMGs (Mercedes-Benz took a controlling interest in AMG in 1999) and Miami Vice-era Mercedes.

“Our goal is to tell the story of tuner and coachbuilt Mercedes through the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s into the 2000s, and educate people not just about the cars, but also about the era these cars came from, all the different countries that firms like AMG were involved in, and how so many of the changes that were happening in a more globalized world are reflected in these vehicles and their owners. We also want people to understand that these cars are worth saving.”

Indeed, at first glance, it might be easy to dismiss a yellow-on-yellow R129 SL, a C140 with a bright purple interior, or a gold SEC with gullwing doors as kind of tacky. Given the distractions and the fickle tastes of the ultra-wealthy and nouveau riche, many of these cars also languished in desert warehouses or random garages before joining the Patina Collective. Even the collector car market didn’t pay much attention to early AMGs or other modern tuner cars until around the late 2010s. But you can’t ignore the level of engineering and attention to detail in these cars once you look closely at them, and in a museum setting at least, what may have been gauche a decade or two ago is starting to look very cool again. They are worth saving.

“I think there was definitely a ‘coolness’ cycle with these cars, which occurs with everything,” says Hassan. “But it feels like these cars stayed at the bottom and were almost forgotten for a really long time, because their highs were so high, they were so absurd and so over the top at the time. They were flashy and gaudy, sure, but they also took a lot of effort, a lot of engineering, a lot of know-how, and a lot of enthusiasm to create these cars. And it was a moment in time that may never happen again.” There was a time, too, when prewar coachbuilt cars were not highly prized.

The Patina Collective focuses on tuned and customized Mercedes-Benzes from around the late 1970s to the early 2000s, with the ‘80s and ‘90s being the main focus. It was a special time in car design, performance, and the aftermarket. Mercedes-Benz was selling over-built, luxurious, stylish, and high-tech cars in one of the company’s golden eras, and its success was driven in large part by explosions of wealth in Japan, the Middle East, and parts of Western Europe.

A Benz was a status symbol, and many buyers wanted to one-up each other by standing out from the crowd of “regular” W126s S-Classes and R129 SLs. This opened the door for a whole industry of tuners and coachbuilders to meet that demand and individualize cars in all sorts of ways. “These were the highest quality cars at the time, so people were starting with that and then making them even more incredible,” says Hassan. While some of these firms are still around, the heyday of custom Mercedes ended in the 2000s as “towards the end of the ‘90s, as AMG was working with Mercedes to make offerings directly to customers, so a lot of the independent tuners just couldn’t compete with that kind of offering and many started to fade away,” shares Hassan.

The variety of cars from this heyday of Mercedes tuning is staggering, and they led varied lives. Some were driven a few times. Some were driven hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Some are subtly modified. Some are as subtle as a cruise missile. The history and engineering behind the buyers and the modifications can be fascinating, and while documentation isn’t particularly straightforward on cars like this, Hassan points out that “a lot of the original owners are still alive, and a lot of the guys that worked on these cars when they were new are still alive to verify them.” He and Ibrahim take great joy in uncovering cars with a cool history or digging into the story behind unusual details. Every car here is interesting, but there were a few highlights during our visit.

If you hear the words “1980s,” “Mercedes” and “Middle East,” your brain might come up with an image very similar to the 1000 SEL “Diana Car and Driver” in the collection. Built by German coachbuilder Car and Driver (not the American magazine) and commissioned by Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of the UAE, it was a “reception car” for Princess Diana’s visit to the Middle East in 1986. Supposedly two were built, and this is the only one known to exist.

Based on a 560 SEL, it has a 600 Pullman bonnet swapped in. This was a very popular modification in the Middle East at the time since, according to Hassan, the 600 Grosser was the car of choice for many wealthy Middle Easterners of the era. That’s probably the least outrageous part of this car, though. There is 24-karat gold plating all over the place (and white leather almost everywhere else) as well as white rubber trim in place of black, a series of Clarion stacks, and televisions, including one in the dash. There is also a hydraulic system underneath that operates a piston right behind each wheel and allows the whole car to pivot on a single tire.

There is also a very early G-Wagen in the collection, billed as the very first G-Wagen modified by AMG and possibly the first G-Wagen imported to America. Like the Diana car, it had its nose swapped. Its first owner in 1981 was Czech tennis star Ivan Lendl, who would go on to be the number one player in the world. It eventually wound up with a California Mercedes mechanic who, coincidentally, was also Czech. Hassan and Ibrahim spotted its strange, dimly lit silhouette in the background of a Craigslist ad for another car, tracked it down, bought it, and put the full history together.

The museum’s first exhibit is the “Unauthorized History of AMG,” and the space really is an anthology of the famous tuner. Wheels and engines flank multiple examples of the legendary Hammer, an AMG limo, and a 6.0-liter G-Wagen, and the show features multiple cars with a “Picasso” interior. Apparently only available to AMG’s preferred clients, the splashy Picasso interior is impossible to miss, its bright array of colors painted by hand on the seat inserts.

Before our visit was over, we were even able to take a Koenig-modified 560 SEC from the collection for a quick drive. The custom interior certainly felt like more of an occasion than the standard car, but the biggest thing that stood out when driving it was the sheer width of the outrageous bodywork and deep wheels sticking way out on each side.

Speaking of driving, this is a working collection. The cars do run, and the ones that have been neglected get cleaned up and sorted once they join the group. About a dozen people work in the collection, not to mention the network of people abroad that help source cars. Hassan and Ibrahim also brought in Bernard Bohn, who had valuable experience acquiring and importing cars in the Porsche world, as director of operations.

Since these specialty cars were originally sold to a global clientele, they had to be sourced, well, globally. Importing cars from one country is enough of a headache. Importing cars from dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas brings plenty of logistical challenges. Bohn shared how difficult it is to get cars out of Bahrain since that Persian Gulf nation imports a lot of products but barely exports any. And then there was the story of an ultra-rare AMG-built van that was located in Kosovo but still on its old Serbian title (Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008, and the two aren’t known for getting along). Those are just two examples. Bringing in 300 such cars, then, and doing it all in thus three years’ time, is quite the undertaking.

Though the Patina Collective has been voracious in its acquisition of cars since 2021, things are starting to slow down on that front: “We have enough to tell the story we want to tell now, which is right around 300 vehicles, and we can keep [the museum] rotating and fresh for a long time,” says Hassan. After the debut AMG exhibit, then, others will follow, and they have shown cars at concours events like Amelia Island and Greenwich as well as at broader cultural events like Art Basel in Miami. There are also regular informative updates on the Patina Collective’s YouTube channel, many of them highlighting individual cars from the collection.

Speaking of informative, even a major Mercedes nerd would be repeatedly stumped and surprised by the cars here, and will come away from their time at the Patina Collective having learned a lot. So, if you like cars at all or cultural history even just a little bit and happen to find yourself anywhere near Miami, this Mercedes mecca is definitely worth a visit.